Video Blog

November 2009

November 11, 2009

The north OB area from Point Loma Blvd to Del Monte along the coast to Sunset Cliffs Blvd is a vibrant area. In addition to the beloved Dog Beach and related dog washes is the Pier, shopping, restaurants and cafes of all varieties and easy access to our local gem, Peoples Co-op.

The coastline here is wide and sandy with some grassy parks for strolling and watching the volleyball games. The housing is a mixture of small cottages from the 20's to the 50's , small condo developments and larger condo conversions.

The available condos for sale have 2 to 3 bedrooms and range from 875 to 1,200 s.f. The average list price / square foot is $477.00 and there is about 1 1/2 months inventory. The average sales price / s.f. in the last 6 months is $445.00.

In the single family home market there is a range currently from 1 bedroom bungalows to a newly built 6 bedroom home on the ocean front. The one bedroom homes range from $300,000 to $350,000, the 3 and 4 bedroom homes from $750,000 to 1 million usually up the hill a little with view potential and the 6 bedroom, 9 bath luxury home on the water for 3 million. There is about 1 month inventory right now and the sales price / s.f is an average of $588.00 / s.f.

Lately, since jumbo loans have been so hard to get (mostly due to the problems in the commercial real estate sector) there have been many more sales in the under $500,000 catagory so it's difficult to give an average sales price the way we normally have done in years past. According to Dave Liniger, the founder of Re/Max the best way to measure sales activity in this market is to go to the price / s.f. model so that's what I've done. To compare this number to the sales price / square foot one year ago is more telling than to give the average price of the homes that have sold in the last month. Last year during this same period, the sales price / s.f. was $608.00 and the inventory was about 3 months. Only 3 homes were sold during this period from May to Nov. last year whereas we have had 7 homes sell during this last 6 month period of this year.

November 03, 2009

The "greening" of San Diego continues as SDG&E finishes up their year-long installation of smart meters and will finally come to our central beach locations by this next spring . The smart meters will replace the current electric meters and will give us and the utility company information about how much energy we consume and how we consume it and most importantly help us to know how to scale back our carbon footprint saving us money and the environment.

California is being recognized as a model of energy efficiency these days. The standards were set back in 1978 in Title 24 for both residential and non-residential buildings and are now producing dividends. As the rest of the country has increased it's energy use by 50% since the 70's, Californians have stayed at about the same rate of energy consumption and have saved $56 billion in electricity and natural gas costs. It's estimated that an additional $23 billion will be saved by 2013. By law, California must get at least 20% of it's energy from renewable sources by 2010 which SDG&E is fullfilling by connecting to a large inland solar farm.

Unlike the current electric meters, smart meters have a computer chip that records energy usage. In the future, you'll get energy use information every hour at your home and every 15 minutes at a business. On high-use days this could help keep the lights on for everyone as the smart meters can give information on how to save energy, according to www.sdg&e/smartmeters .

Kevin Falconer's office recently announced that a landscaping ordinance is imminent which will require all new construction to use drought-tolerant plants in their landscape. For information about drought-tolerant and /or native plants to our area along the central coast check out: www.cnpssd.org